I designed a poster (11″ x 17″) in honor of Bloomsday, an international celebration and live communal reading of James Joyce’s epic Ulysses. The words here are the last lines of the final chapter of the book, “Penelope”.

The words are the beautiful stream of consciousness of Molly Bloom, the protagonist’s wife. As she stands at her kitchen window washing dishes, waiting for her husband to come home, her mind drifts and she remembers a passionate love affair she had as a young girl in Spain. For many people (especially women), these words are the most memorable in the entire book:

“Yes I said
yes I will
Yes.”

My inspiration came from two very different places. The first was the film “A Place in the Sun” (1951, dir. George Stevens) – this is where the still images are from.

“Yes” is the most positive word in the English language, and Joyce uses it within a deeply romantic context. The still images from “A Place in the Sun” struck me as a perfect visual representation of Joyce’s words.

My second inspiration was Yoko Ono’s 1966 installation exhibit “Ceiling Painting”, at the Indica Gallery in London. It’s said that this is where she and John Lennon first met.

*NOTE: In the poster above, each “stem” is a line of text from the final words of Ulysses.